Katsushiro
Feb 6th, 2005, 08:47 AM
Hey guys. Long time lurker, first time poster. I've been podcasting for a short while now (just uploaded my 11th show this morning), and I've ben watching with interest the ideas people have been having about ways to conserve bandwith, since, as we all know, the more popular you get, the higher your bandwith usage can soar, and that number can rise pretty **** fast.
I've seen a lot of talk about using Bittorrent to fix it, and I even experimented a little with it during my first couple of shows, but I didn't care for it. It was wonky, support for it in the major podcatching clients is mediocre at best, and if you try and pick up a podcast with it after the first couple of days, you're SOL. Honestly, I don't think Bittorrent is the answer we're looking for.
So I kept searching, I've found commercial services like lybsin.org, which look promising, but I wasn't ready to pick it up. Then I ran across something I'd seen before on Slashdot: Coral ( http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/ ).
In a nutshell, Coral is a distributed caching mechanism that's available for free use by anyone. Files distributed through Coral get cached in a series of servers spread all across the world, and when someone requests the file, it gets sent to them from the closest cache location, rather than coming directly from your site.
Why do I like it so much? Because of the simplicity with which it works. You don't have to make any modifications to existing podcatcher clients. Your listeners don't have to download any weird plugins or learn how to use bittorrent. They can download and subscribe as they always did, and they won't notice any difference. All you, as a podcaster, have to do to get your file Coralized, is include one little bit into your podcast url: '.nyud.net:8090'. Like so:
If the link to your podcast was:
http://www.yoursite.com/podcast.mp3
It now reads:
http://www.yoursite.com.nyud.net:8090/podcast.mp3
And that's it! Nothing to install, no need to sign up anywhere, and it works transparently with all web browsers and podcastcher clients I've tried it with. I've been distributing my last 5 or 6 podcasts through it and so far it's worked like a dream, no one's complained about slow downloads or not being able to get the file, and my bandwith's stayed under control despite a slowly growing listener userbase.
I know I can't be the only podcaster who's found Coral useful, but I haven't found anyone discussing it as a possibility, anywhere. Everyone's so focused on the Bittorrent solution (which I think might be a dead end), and I've seen no one paying attention to other possibilities, like Coral. Has anyone else here tried Coral, or not? And what do you think? For me at least, it seems to be a nearly ideal solution..
.Katsushiro.
http://www.techgnosisweb.com/
I've seen a lot of talk about using Bittorrent to fix it, and I even experimented a little with it during my first couple of shows, but I didn't care for it. It was wonky, support for it in the major podcatching clients is mediocre at best, and if you try and pick up a podcast with it after the first couple of days, you're SOL. Honestly, I don't think Bittorrent is the answer we're looking for.
So I kept searching, I've found commercial services like lybsin.org, which look promising, but I wasn't ready to pick it up. Then I ran across something I'd seen before on Slashdot: Coral ( http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/ ).
In a nutshell, Coral is a distributed caching mechanism that's available for free use by anyone. Files distributed through Coral get cached in a series of servers spread all across the world, and when someone requests the file, it gets sent to them from the closest cache location, rather than coming directly from your site.
Why do I like it so much? Because of the simplicity with which it works. You don't have to make any modifications to existing podcatcher clients. Your listeners don't have to download any weird plugins or learn how to use bittorrent. They can download and subscribe as they always did, and they won't notice any difference. All you, as a podcaster, have to do to get your file Coralized, is include one little bit into your podcast url: '.nyud.net:8090'. Like so:
If the link to your podcast was:
http://www.yoursite.com/podcast.mp3
It now reads:
http://www.yoursite.com.nyud.net:8090/podcast.mp3
And that's it! Nothing to install, no need to sign up anywhere, and it works transparently with all web browsers and podcastcher clients I've tried it with. I've been distributing my last 5 or 6 podcasts through it and so far it's worked like a dream, no one's complained about slow downloads or not being able to get the file, and my bandwith's stayed under control despite a slowly growing listener userbase.
I know I can't be the only podcaster who's found Coral useful, but I haven't found anyone discussing it as a possibility, anywhere. Everyone's so focused on the Bittorrent solution (which I think might be a dead end), and I've seen no one paying attention to other possibilities, like Coral. Has anyone else here tried Coral, or not? And what do you think? For me at least, it seems to be a nearly ideal solution..
.Katsushiro.
http://www.techgnosisweb.com/